And that makes sense because /etc/X11/xorg.conf exists but it is now empty. If I rerun vxconf and select vesa the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (actually "/etc/X11/xorg.conf@") appears to contain reasonable information.

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if I run vxconf and select VXCONF I get to the SELECT DEFAULT COLOR DEPTH screen and SELECT DEFAULT MONITOR RESOLUTION and no matter what I select from either menu, the program terminates with the X configuration ERROR screen.

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I'll stop there. Any suggestions?

By the way, I have been running Vector Linux 5.9 standard with no trouble for the past couple of years and thought the Light version might be a bit faster, and also I would not have to do some of the rather clumsy program selection I had performed with the standard version.

A quick test and starting point is to just use the default vesa settings. First, boot to text mode (TUI)As root, copy the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf-vesa to /etc/X11/xorg.conftry "startx" and see if you have any luck.

If you still have your xorg.conf file from VL5.9, copying it over may work.You can even try booting a 5.9 Live CD and have it produce an xorg.conf.

I got vesa to "work" by setting depth to 8, but the screen was split in half with nop and bottom reversed (wrong locations written in video ram?). I don't know why vesa doesn't work with depth 16 except maybe the video ram is not where vesa expects it to be.

The problem sounds like it could be a combination of 1) setting the appropriate video driver, and 2) setting the appropriate values for your monitor frequencies. You said that the monitor was identified as 'generic monitor' which will use default (GRAS) values, however this is not always the case. You should research the monitor you're using and determine is resolution capabilities, and vertical and horizontal frequency ranges. Once you know these values, start with the default VESA xorg (as nightflier suggests), and edit the screen section to match your monitor. Then see if X will start. If not, one-by-one, change the video driver to the other options (glint, nv, fbdev) and see how they respond to X.

I did try just copying the default vesa file and except for the use of depth = 8 the results are the same. I did get a cd version of knoppix running and it used the "glint" driver and claims it's talking to the Texas Instruments TVP4020. VL 6.0 Light doesn't seem recognize the TI chip for glint but there could be something else I had wrong. I have the xorg.conf file from the knoppix system and am looking for additional hints there.

Something I noticed in the knoppix config is a ModeLine statement in the Monitor section that seems to prescribe raster parameters that would mate the video card setup to the monitor capabilities. An example for a 1600 x 1200 screen would be:

I tried using the VXCONF Auto probe and when that program ended with an error I selected the option to edit xorg.conf with mcedit. I changed the monitor horizontal and verticle frequencies to match my HP Pavilion M70 capabilities and ran startx. I have the resulting Xorg.0.log and xorg.conf files. I have attached them to this message with the ".txt" extension so the bb program would accept them. What do you think?